Awe, Nice!

Short interviews from people who work outside, about a moment of wonder they experienced. Wonder at Work.

Mini-Awe-Polis 6 01/11/2026

Mini-Awe-Polis 6 Welcome to !, where we highlight moments of wonder while working outdoors. My name is Maddy Butcher, I’m the creator and producer of awenice and it’s time for another segment that I call, Mini-Awe-Polis, a collection of observations, like hay in my jacket pockets. If you’ve been listening to lately, you know that we have dedicated several segments to wildland fire fighting, specifically some moments as told by members of Interagency Hot Shot crews, who are elite wildland fire fighters charged with some of the most risky assignments. I think it would be a safe summation to say that their moments of awe were particularly adrenalin-fueled. It got me thinking about what awe means. What does it mean for me? What does it mean for my interviewees? What does it mean for you, dear listener? Roughly, awe for me means a moment in time that’s memorable for what I’m seeing and experiencing with all my senses. Often, but not all the time, moments of awe are around something unexpected, something I have never witnessed before. Or, it could something that starts out as totally expected but then takes a brilliant turn which stops me in my tracks. I have moments of awe that are not adrenalin-y at all. Like seeing Niagara Falls. I have other moments that are quite adrenalin-y. Like seeing my kids run hellbent towards the Niagara River above the falls. This might sound absurd, but when you visit the Falls, you can park in a big parking lot and basically walk right up to the river’s edge. Nothing’s stopping you from walking right in. My memory of seeing the falls will be forever tied to screaming bloody murder as my sons, then four, six, and eight, chased gulls and sprinted towards the current that would horrendously carry them away. It's true, as research tells us, that high emotions can cement, conflate, and even embellish memories that might otherwise fade away. Just so you know, there is no embellishment here. My rotten kids really did run for the river. And Niagara Falls is impressive. It’s loud and you can feel the mist of it on your face from a long ways away. Anyway, I’ve been spending some time in southern Arizona. At night, I take the dogs for a walk and do last call the horses. Sometimes I use a headlamp and when I do, I’ve been catching these little flecks of reflection in the dirt. At first, I thought they were just shiny parts of sand or rock. But they are not. They are the eyes of certain spiders that build burrows and scoot back in them when approached. Pretty cool. Everything here is prickly, spiny, thorny, and pokey. The dogs and horses have figured it out pretty quickly. Me, less so. Often, plants will have the obvious spines but then also less obvious, frankly impossible-to-see spines that might feel okay at first, when you make the mistake of coming into contact with them, but 10 minutes later you’re mumbling and grumbling, shaking your hand and tenderly googling how best to extract prickers you can’t even see. I’m still amazed by how the birds perch and feed on cactus. I don’t live near where there are saguaros. It’s too cold. But I like seeing them. Did you know that it takes about 15 years for a saguaro cactus to grow 12 inches? And it takes another 60 or more years for it to grow an arm. Saguaros serve as some pretty cool homes for birds, who have, of course, figured out the prickers. welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us at awenice.com. By the way, Kershaw knives, makers of some of the best pocket knives out there, has stepped up to sponsor Awe, Nice. Check out the Ken Onion line. They’re excellent. Awe, Nice! also welcomes your support. . Music is by my friend, Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/39689665

Steve Nicholson, II 12/11/2025

Jamie Carpenter 12/11/2025

Jamie Carpenter Welcome to where we highlight moments of wonder while working outdoors. This week, we have another interview with a wildland fire fighter. I met Jamie Carpenter on the Stoner Mesa fire this summer. Jamie was on the Cal-Wood fire five years ago, during another history-making fire season, this time complicated by the pandemic. Ten million acres burned across the western US. Thousands of homes were lost and dozens of people died. The Cal-Wood fire was towards the end of a vveerry long season. It was relatively small, eventually contained at about 10,000 acres, but it was right in Boulder County. So, that’s pretty scary. Also, it was going on when two of the biggest fires in Colorado history were raging. The Cameron Peak fire and the East Troublesome fire, both burned about 200,000 acres. That’s over 600 square miles. Jamie told me that typical days start with a 5:30 wake up, with breakfast and then meetings where they review the day’s game plan, in which weather, fire behavior, and safety aspects are discussed. For planning, they use the PACE acronym which stands Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency. You’ll hear it reference in Jamie’s account. As I witnessed at the Stoner fire, sometimes the terrain is just too gnarly to directly engage the fire. So, as you’ll hear, Jamie and the crew were conducting a firing, burning a limited number of acres in order to create a perimeter, to contain the approaching blaze. I asked Jamie how he got into wildland fire fighting and he said initially it was a good way to work outside and then have time off in the winter to ski. But then he added some thoughts. Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us . Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. You can find a link and a donate button Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/39364520

Doug Falconi, Part II 12/02/2025

Steve Nicholson, I 12/02/2025

Doug Falconi, Part I 12/01/2025

Nina Hance, II 11/14/2025

Nina Hance, I 11/14/2025

Jon Tanguay, II 11/10/2025

Jon Tanguay, I 11/10/2025

Terence Kenney 11/07/2025

Terence Kenney This week, I interviewed Terence Kenney. Terence has lived his life in Harpswell, Maine, and is the third of what I hope will be regular interviewees from my home state. This is the first segment talking with someone who works on the water. Terence recounts a rough scalloping trip to Gouldsboro, up the coast from Harpswell by about 150 miles if you’re driving. It’s theoretically less if you’re traveling by boat, but remember, there are 4,600 islands off the coast of Maine. If you’re captaining a 40-foot boat, in a big storm, in the dark, that number can be pretty daunting. Matinicus Island, so you know, is about 22 miles offshore. Terence also mentions Southwest Harbor, or 'sowwest' harbor, as he says. That’s on Mt. Desert Island. Mt. Desert is home to Acadia National Park and the tourist haven, Bar Harbor. Also, the scallop drag Terence was using weighs about 1,000 pounds. When you fill it with rocks and run it through the bow cleat, as he describes, it can serve as an anchor since it’s so heavy. Steaming is when you’re going to your fishing grounds but not fishing. It’s like the commute. I feel like weather can be a lot more daunting when you’re outside, and even more so on the water. The storm that Terence recalled happened several years after the No Name Storm of 1991, also a Halloween event. That storm, which came to be known as the Perfect Storm and was written about and made into a Hollywood movie, claimed 13 lives, including six on the Andrea Gail, a fishing vessel lost off the coast of Nova Scotia. Most of the time, Terence told me, scalloping is peaceful. Well offshore, you can go all day without seeing another boat, he said. Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us at awenice.com. Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. You can find a link to his music and a donate button on our Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/38953895

Mini-Awe-Polis 5 10/31/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 5 It’s time for another Mini-Awe-Polis, a collection of observations, like hay in my jacket pockets. Lately, after more than two dozen successfully recorded moments for Awe, Nice! I have been having some short and stilted conversations with people who work outside, who spend their lives outside. These are folks who have done incredible feats, witnessed cool weather events, been part of amazing wildlife encounters. Yet, they struggle to identify and articulate a specific moment of wonder. I get it. As a young adult, I remember thinking Maine was pretty ho-hum. Nice ocean. Nice hills. But bugs and rain. Then I returned as a 40-year-old. I went with a visitor on , behind the recycling center, between the Harpswell peninsulas. I noticed the tiny plants and small animals that thrive under the conifers. I watched tide come up Strawberry Creek as if it were marching (Strawberry Creek is a misnomer, more an inlet than a creek, about as wide as I am tall, full of eel grass and opening up to salt marsh and mudflats and the Atlantic Ocean). I drove towards Land’s End, a gift shop at the tip of Bailey Island, where I saw a moose swimming. A big bull moose swimming in Casco Bay is a pretty nifty thing to see. But I think it took leaving, then coming back, to say, Wow. Sometimes, I’m finding, the wonder for people who work outside every day, in the elements, gets lessened by seeing a lot (even during the course of a day) and gets tamped down by the need to get things done. Moments of awe might be acknowledged by a smile or a nod or a pause but there’re nothing to write home about. Oohing and ahhing is something that tourists do. Celebrating them, sharing them is something instagrammers and weekend warriors do. It’s not that they don’t see stuff. From my informal surveying over the years, I’d say people who work outside, who work in challenging environments, are very attentive to detail. Last week, we brought cows down from the mountain and we were paying attention to the weather, how cows were moving (individually as well as as a group), whether the calves were tiring, how the dogs and horses were working, how the terrain was affecting our travel, where and when we could anticipate things shifting. Just a few details of many to consider every moment of every hour. The scene changes and we move on. I watched a bear, maybe 20 feet from dozens of cows, simply stop as he was walking along a downed tree and watch us. Me, personally, I like to think I’m pretty observant. As a kid, my parents, especially my mom, instilled a practice of curiosity and observation. Not just ‘what bird was that?’ for instance, but ‘what is it doing?’ Summer field work during my college years taught me to distinguish between a worried, you’re too close to my nest chirp and a less stressed, investigative chirp. We were studying the mating patterns of Indigo Buntings, which seem to be monogamous, but, lo and behind, were not. Like a lot of birds, indigo bunting males have a specific song that birders can identify. But with our work, we could identify individual males by their particular variation of that song. Now, when I hear spotted towhees (which were the inspiration for Jody Chapel’s Awe, Nice! logo), I do hear the sort of ‘drink your tea.’ But other times, it’s ‘drink your’ or ‘drink, drink your tea.’ Some other behaviors I’ve learned over time: When birds pop up on a branch and wipe their beaks, it’s usually because they have been foraging. Birds like to poop before they take off flying again. Field work taught me to think about animals, not just at that moment, but what might have occurred before I was watching them and what might happen next. Still, like my interviewees, I tend to get used to what I see, hear, and smell. I can get weary in my observations. I think people who work outside often consider moments of wonder with kind of mental shoulder shrug. Wonder abounds. We’re lucky and grateful to be out here. But also, it’s just another day. welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us at awenice.com. Awe, Nice! also welcomes your support. You can find a donate button . Music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/38859410

Matt Barnes, II 10/19/2025

Vicki Taussig 10/19/2025

Matt Barnes 10/13/2025

Forrest Van Tuyl on Rock Jacks 10/13/2025

Bob Bragg 10/01/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 4 10/01/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 4 Welcome to Awe, Nice! where we highlight moments of wonder while working outdoors. We’re on the radio and we’re also on podcast platforms. My name is Maddy Butcher. I live in southwestern Colorado and I’ve been a journalist for 40 years. Thus far, we’ve focused entirely on interviews with people working on the land, but soon we’ll have segments from folks who work on the water. Fresh water, salt water. I grew up on the coast of Maine and today I wanted to share another mini-moment of awe. Yes, it’s time for Mini-Awe-Polis. Mini Awe Polis is a bundle of small wonders collected in my noggin. Like hay in my jacket pockets. A few segments ago, I talked about experiences around tide. This week, I wanted to share another ocean-related thought. Fog. Fog fosters uncertainty. It’s funny, even the etymology of fog is foggy. Danish, Old Norse, Old English, Dutch, and German languages all have somewhat similar words which, back in the 16th century meant things like spray, or damp, moist, or drifting snow storm. Fog appears when water vapor, that’s water in gas form, condenses. Fog is tiny water droplets hanging in the air. Fog often happens when there is a difference between the water temperature and the air temperature - like a cold morning on warmer water, or vice versa. Fog hardly ever happens if there’s wind. So, if you’re sailing, for instance, and it’s foggy, forget about it. Some describe fog as being in the dark and that’s true. But, you know, when you’re walking in the dark you generally feel the ground beneath you. It’s a surface you can rely on. But if you’re on a boat and in the fog, you might be traveling through water with depths of 200 feet, 20 feet, or two feet. You might be heading towards the shore or away from it. Hard to say. Fog can completely derail your plans for getting out on the water. Even if you know the area well, even if you have a depth finder, fog will make things difficult, if not impossible. Unless you’re clamming. It’s good to be a clammer when there’s fog, you just need the tide to come at a decent time of day. There are buoys and lighthouses and other marine markers to help if you can see. If you can’t see, there are bells as well as fog horns which mostly sound beautiful, low and regular, like a cow calling for her calf but without any urgency. Horns and bells might drive some people nuts. Certainly fog has that tendency. You can’t rely on fog lifting at any time. It just will when it does. I remember painting houses on Harpswell Neck when I was a teenager. We just couldn’t paint if it was foggy (which it often was). You might as well be painting in the rain. When I was working construction on the coast (but not painting) the fog would be so thick you’d need a towel to regularly wipe the moisture off your face. I worked at Cook’s Lobster House out on Bailey Island in my 40's. It was, of course, right on the water. I should say almost everything on Bailey Island is right on the water. It’s an island which connects to Orr’s Island (which connects to Great Island and the mainland) by a cribstone bridge. A cribstone bridge is built from massive blocks of granite and water flows through them. Nothing but gravity holds it together. Of course, it’s paved on top but that doesn’t really count. It’s thought to be the only one of its kind in the world. Anyway, lots and lots of tourists would come to Cook’s to sit in the booths or outside at tables, eat lobster, and look out the three sides of massive picture windows where they could see lobster boats, fishing boats, sail boats, motor boats coming and going. Except when it was foggy. Then you couldn’t see past the parking lot. When will this fog go away? Your guess is as good as mine. Can I get you another rum and Coke? The poet Colin Sargent wrote: One year the fog stayed all summer As if it were a lodger Picking his teeth after dinner, Refusing to retire To his room upstairs Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, . You can find a donate button . Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/38266765

Forrest Van Tuyl 08/26/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 3 08/26/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 3 My name is Maddy Butcher. I live in southwestern Colorado and I’ve worked as a journalist for several decades. I like to spend time outside and, thankfully, I have spent many years working outside, not just playing outside. I think it’s important to distinguish between the two. In my experience, people’s perspectives, experiences, and philosophies towards the outdoors is different depending on if they are building a life where they’re working, if they become an important part of their outdoor world, or if they’re just passing through. So far, we’ve focused entirely on interviews with people working on the land, but that’s not by decree. As I’ve mentioned, I grew up in Maine and I’m looking ahead to interviews with people who work on the water. Occasionally with this project, I share a few mini-moments of awe. My nickname for these segments – cringeworthy, I’m sure – is Mini-Awe-Polis. Mini Awe Polis is a bundle of small wonders that have collected in my noggin. Kind of like the hay in my jacket pockets. This week, I wanted to share some water-related thoughts, maybe to kind of to prep you all for those interviews with fishermen and lobstermen. Okay, maybe it’s just an excuse to share them. The biggest factor in being on the water where I grew up on Middle Bay, anyway, was tide. I’m guessing you know what tide is. But if you don’t, tides are the rhythmic movements of the world’s water, based on the pull of the moon. In Harpswell, the difference between high and low tide is nearly 10 feet. In Miami, closer to the equator, it’s less than three. Heading up the Maine coast to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in the Bay of Fundy, the difference between high and low tide is 53 feet. Billions of gallons of water flowing in and out, twice a day, every day. Not exactly, twice a day. The movement of the tide is more like once every 12 and half hours. So high tide would be at three in the afternoon on Monday and more like six o’clock by Friday. Tide, at least for us on the mud flats of Middle Bay, meant the difference between heading out to swim or boat or go clamming or fishing or not. It meant that a moored boat would likely be aground or nearly so at low tide, but floating freely at high tide. It meant the difference between swimming in water the height of a kiddie pool or the deep end. Living on the mud flats isn’t all bad though because at low tide on sunny days, the mud soaks up the sun and heats up the incoming water. By August, that means it’s actually swimmable. Maybe water temps in the 60s. In certain areas and at certain times, you do not want to mess with the tide. The flow in tight spaces of the shore creates current that you can’t swim against and often can’t boat against. Maine’s coast is full of ins and outs and wild meanderings. A straight line from the New Hampshire border to the Canadian border is just 228 miles as the crow flies. But the in and outs and peninsulas and islands make it nearly 3,500 miles. 3,500 miles! If you’re on the water, you really need to know where you are, where the tide might take you, or how it might make things more challenging. And oh boy if you want to start combining tide with fog. In the coldest of winters, the ice would freeze clear across Middle Bay, a mile wide in spots. But inevitably, tide would break up the ice in chunks, sometimes as big as a yard or as small as a cooler. It was a thing to go iceberg hopping, a really stupid thing that we did as kids. A boy I knew was iceberg hopping. The tide was going out and took him way down the bay. Like miles away from home. The Coast Guard had to fetch him. I want to say something more about mud flats, since they get so disparaged. I mean, they are not picturesque, like rocky coastlines or sandy beaches. If you’re barefoot or are digging into the mud, that mud will stay with you. It’s so finely grained that it can be hard to wash off. Mud flats have a particularly wonderful but certainly distinctive smell. Earthy, salty, of the seaweed and eel grass and clams and hermit crabs. As a girl, I was riding a bus to summer camp up the coast. There was a girl from New York City who said, ‘pew, what’s that smell? It smells like a sewer! Welcome to the Maine coast, honey. welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us . at awenice.com. Oh, and AweNice also welcomes your support. You can find a donate button . Music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl,. Find more of his terrific music from a link . Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/37960895

Rae Nickerson 08/18/2025

Beau Gaughran 07/31/2025

Kim Kerns 07/29/2025

Sisto Hernandez 07/24/2025

Sara Lowe 07/11/2025

Summer Peterson 07/11/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 2 06/25/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 2 We all are capable of experiencing moments of wonder. They are not reserved solely for creative or religious people. Moments of awe cross the political spectrum. They cross the livelihood spectrum. Awe is a positive force that can be felt by everyone. Nonetheless, I carry a fair amount of skepticism around with me. It’s a journalistic thing. Like. I tend to think moments of awe actually happen with ho-hum regularity. It’s since we’re humans – distracted, in our heads, with dulled-down senses, that we miss them. When we do witness awesome moments, it’s because that moment occurred just when we happen to be particularly present and tuned in to our surroundings. I mean, how often to you find seaglass or a shard of old Indian pottery when you are not intentionally looking for it? How do you hear the ‘drink your tea, tea, tea of a towhee (the bird in our logo) if you’re not listening? Most Awe, Nice! interviewees tell me they experience moments of awe all the time. Yes, cool things are happening all the time, but these folks, these interviewees see them because they’re kinda special in a 21st century way. They’re quiet and connected, with their senses that is. Occasionally with this project, I share a few mini-moments of awe. My nickname for these segments - cringe away! – is Mini-Awe-Polis. Mini Awe Polis is a bundle of small wonders that have collected in my noggin. Kind of like the hay in my jacket pockets. Since we working our way into the dog days of summer, I wanted to give canines some attention. While dogs sure can wreck nature sightings – because they tend to investigate eagerly and like to eat or chase things that you might want to see – they are also good at helping you discover things you might have otherwise overlooked. So I try to pay attention to them. When we’re working cows, for instance, they alert me to things I should be paying attention to all the time. Cows can hide. I know this may sound silly, but in big country, they can tuck in under scrub oak and you can ride right past them. Of course, this doesn’t happen if your dogs are with you. In the fall, we bring cows off of the National Forest and down to winter pastures. It’s a week of long days and, after a summer of moderate work, the dogs are primed and I feel like they take this week seriously. One day, in the middle of the day, I watched my dogs Monty and Tina over several hours as they helped move cows up a gully and across a big meadow, bordered by scrub oak and Ponderosa pines. I knew they were thirsty, but they are so dedicated to the task that they won’t leave the cows. So I developed a command, ‘get some water’ so that they can essentially give themselves permission to drink. On this day, I saw a drainage and told them to get some water. They heard me but still took turns. Tina went for water. Monty stayed with the cows. When Tina came back, Monty went for water. On the next day, we had more interaction with other help, folks with their dogs and horses. We got the cows to their stopping point that evening, a high desert grassy area with a pond, and settled them in. The dogs knew we were done for the day. I watched as almost all of them seemed to let down. Most of them peeed and pooped. Some starting playing. They had punched their time card and were headed for the tailgate party. My mom told me many times: a productive life is a happy life. Sure, maybe she was telling me to work hard, but she also felt this way – passionately - when it came to dogs. I do think that my dogs are happiest when they are working. But what do I know? /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/37148885

Mini-Awe-Polis 1 06/25/2025

Mini-Awe-Polis 1 I developed AweNice with the notion that we all are capable of experiencing moments of wonder. They are not reserved solely for creative or religious people. Moments of awe cross the political spectrum. They cross the livelihood spectrum. Awe is a positive force that can be felt by everyone. This project specifically seeks out interviews with those who work outside and work with animals, people I feel aren’t heard from often and whose daily life is relatively quiet and disconnected. I should qualify that: disconnected in the mainstream, digital sense. I’m finding, though, that they are deeply connected in other ways, to other things. So, anyway, I want to share a few mini-moments of awe that I’ve experienced. Get ready to cringe all you listeners! This is the first segment of Mini-Awe-Polis. Mini Awe Polis is a bundle of small wonders that have collected in my noggin. Kind of like the hay in my jacket pockets. There is a big, solitary, feral cat that comes around at night, especially in winter. I’ve named him Dana because I’m not sure if he’s male or female, but I’ll call him a him. Dana is fat and smart and friendly, which I think is a pretty unusual combination for a feral cat. Because he is not stupid, Dana knows he can handle one dog, but probably not more than one. My dogs are not warm to cats, so, not surprisingly I rarely see Dana during the day. But at last call (sometime between 8 and 11 at night when I check the horses and take a little walk with the dogs), I can sometimes spot him. More than once, he’s crouched in the scrub, a hundred feet from the house, and watched as the dogs, clueless, go streaking by. I think Dana has us pretty well figured out. It’s fun to consider how he considers us. And speaking of cats. I was helping gather calves on New Year’s Day last year. I had two dogs with me and was riding my grey horse, Ray. The country was rough, full of piñon, juniper, and scrub oak. I was sussing out a small, narrow canyon alone. When I say sussing out, I mean that I suspected the calves were down in the canyon, grazing their way east, and I was zigging and zagging, trying to find a way down to them. But the sides were steep, mostly unpassable, and I was having to back up and turn around a lot. My dog, Tina, jogged across this giant boulder jutting out over the gully and I took a picture to capture how frustrating the going was. We paused and listened for animals moving. Then I look across and watched as an adult mountain lion strode up the other side of the canyon, some hundred feet away. She walked with purpose but not urgently. She was large and lanky and graceful, and powerful – I remember her tail, which seemed as long as her body. I soaked it in, not taking my eyes off her, not moving or reaching for my phone. Then I saw another one, a juvenile, following her at a distance. I’ve lived in cat country for more than a decade and I know well the feeling - in your bones and in your mind - that you are being seen by them. But I’d not laid eyes on one until now. Stay safe, Dana. AweNice welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us . AweNice also welcomes your support. You can find a donate button on our about page. Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time. /episode/index/show/e436cd6d-bcd1-4cf7-9422-dae5704e652b/id/37148680

Andrew Clements 06/20/2025

Scotty Calhoun 06/20/2025

Awe, Nice!

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